Where Reasons End

Name: Where Reasons End
Availability: InStock
Rating: 8.6 (873 reviews)
ISBN: 9781984817372

Yiyun Li

出版社

Random House

出版时间

2019-02-05

ISBN

9781984817372

评分

★★★★★

标签

小说李翊云美国死亡

书籍介绍

这不是一本让人读得舒服的书，却是一本让人读完后久久无法舒服的书。李翊云让一位母亲在自杀身亡的儿子死后，进入一个名为“nowhere”的空间，与儿子展开一场只有对话、没有情节的交谈。全书没有故事，只有语言本身在反复纠缠：词源、语法、句法被一遍遍拆解，仿佛母亲唯有通过咬文嚼字，才能把儿子留住。许多读者因此感到被排斥——聪明而疏离，字里行间全是“I me”，让人窒息甚至反胃；也有人细读后终于触到那“难以名状的悲伤”。它不适合寻求慰藉的读者，却精准地捕捉到：当语言失效、理由穷尽之处，母亲只能靠文字重建一个活生生的儿子。这是一次把创伤写成艺术的高风险尝试，成败全在那份对文字的执念里。

作者简介

Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing, China and moved to the United States in 1996. She received an MFA from Iowa Writers' Workshop and an MFA in creative nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa. Her stories and essays have been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review,and elsewhere. She has received a Whiting Writers' Award and was awarded a Lannan Foundation residency in Marfa, TX. Her debut collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, PEN/Hemingway Award, Guardian First Book Award, and California Book Award for first fiction. She was recently selected as one of Granta's 21 Best of Young American Novelists. She lives in Oakland, California with her husband and their two sons, and teaches at University of California, Davis.

AI导读

核心看点

虚构母子在死后世界的对话，直面丧子之痛
以文字重构生命，探讨语言与情感的边界
无情节推进，全靠高密度的哲学思辨支撑

读者共识

文字极具美感与智力挑战，但情感基调极度压抑
部分读者认为母亲形象冷漠自恋，对话显刻意
评价两极分化：有人视其为艺术杰作，有人觉其虚伪

精彩摘录

"Perfect. Imperfect. A pair of adjectives that come over and over again, in all seasons, day in and day out, taunting us, judging us, isolating us, turning our isolation into illness. Is there a more accoplished adjective than perfect? Perfect is free from comparison, perfect rejects superlative. We "
"I don’t like making friends with older people. Besides, one can’t really be friends with one’s mother. Can one not? No. The essence of growing up is to play hide-and-seek with one’s mother successfully, Nikolai said. All children win, I said. Mothers are bad at seeking. You did find me. Not as your "
"I suppose you’re right, I said. Still, I wish you knew how much you are missed by many people. Mommy, Nikolai said, and the way he said it almost made me weep. Mommy, you know that’s a cliché. What if life could be saved by clichés? What if life must be lived by clichés? Somewhere tomorrow and somew"
"Rules are set to be broken, he said. Deadlines are set to be missed, I said. Deadline as a word used to fascinate me, a word that connects time and space and death with such absoluteness. Promises are made not to be kept, he said. Love is made not to last, I said. A contestable statement, though he "
"Poor you, he said. Waylaid by time. Waylay, I said. I’ve never used it in my writing. No offense, but you don’t have an expansive vocabulary. Luckily my mind is not limited by my vocabulary, I said. (In my head I used the same tone that I had used when Nikolai had introduced me to his kindergarten c"
"Days are not the only place where we live, Nikolai said. Time is not the only place where we live, I said. Days are. I don’t have to have days to live now. And yet I have to live in days, I said. I’m sorry, he said. Days: the easiest possession, requiring only automatic participation. The days he ha"
"If memory were a fetter, he said, many people would envy me. Why? Each day they live makes the fetter more unbreakable than the day before. What if, I thought, that is life’s necessity? Still, I said, aren’t you able to know the poem even if you can’t remember? It doesn’t work the way you imagined. "
"I’m rather dense, I said. Gormless, you know. Dense and gormless were the favorite adjectives Nikolai and his brother used to describe me. Do you really believe that? Why not, I said. How I always hate your hypocrisy, he said. Oh, I said. I was taken aback. I was surprised that I had forgotten this:"